Web Analytics For Your Online Store: A Simplified Explanation

Web analytics is the process of collecting data about the activities of people accessing your website. This includes how they found you, when they visited, and what pages they looked at.  It also includes what they bought, what sections of your web page see the most clicks, and so on. There are literally thousands of things you can track depending on the web analytics software you are using.   The practice of analyzing your site and the behavior of  your visitors is important.   It gives you insight into how people are finding your ecommerce website, but it also gives you insight on what people are doing on your site.   Are they visiting and staying awhile, or are they hitting your page and leaving?

Google Analytics is a free script and service whereby you can insert a small snippet of code into any pages you want tracked.  The most common place to insert the code is into your header or footer, so that it can appear on every page.  Google Analytics should be the first place you start when considering an analytic program.   The main reason is that it is free, but keep in mind that as your site grows and becomes more profitable you may want to invest in a 3rd party analytics service that can provide you more detailed and in most cases, more helpful information.  But Google Analytics is priced great (being free and all) and it will get you started.

Web Analytics is a broad field and crosses over into other types of behavior analysis, but it is one that you should start to measure and track so you can make the best possible improvements to your website.